When Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) encounters a mysterious, seemingly mechanical blue scarab, it attaches itself to him, digging into his spine, extruding large bug-like legs, and sometimes enveloping him in some kind of alien-borne nanotech suit against his will. Later, he’s told that the only way to remove the bio-mechanical weapon system is to kill him. If Blue Beetle were a Marvel movie, we’d be into month three of hearing about how really, this isn’t really just a superhero picture but a Cronenbergian exercise in body-horror.
As it happens, Blue Beetle is not especially different from a Marvel movie, nor is it wildly divergent from Shazam!, its sibling in smaller-scale DC Comics adaptations with “heart,” rather than a swirling vortex of climactic garbage around which CG action figures whale on each other. (It is, in other words, nowhere near Cronenberg, beyond the transformation sequence’s utility in planting seeds of interest in certain young viewers.) In form, Jaime resembles the MCU version of Spider-Man: Youthful angst, reluctance to completely upend his life, all encased in tech he doesn’t fully understand–a lower-middle-class version of Iron Man. His big, boisterous family somewhat recalls the gaggle of foster sibs surrounding Billy Batson in Shazam! He can’t even claim firsties on a superhero scarab, which I believe figured into the Moon Knight TV series in some way. (I did not finish said series.)
What makes Blue Beetle stand out – appropriately enough for a superhero industrial complex with such massive marketing arms – is its demographic positioning. I’m not only referring to the fact that the Reyes family is Mexican American, though this does lend the movie some much-needed, much-appreciated texture. Jaime also perches at an unusual superhero age: He’s a recent college graduate in his early twenties, returning home to his fictional Texas hometown of Palmera City, entering into a woeful job market, thoroughly uncertain about what to do with his life (grad school is mentioned and dismissed as an impossible expense) or how best to help his struggling family. In other words, Maridueña gets to play the age that most Spider-Man actors already are when they sign on to play a 17-year-old, a quarterlife-crisis crossroads that most movie superheroes have left in the rearview. Once in a while, a pre-powers character in one of these movies will be working a vaguely wacky dead-end job; rarely do you see them putting their back into scraping gum off of a rich lady’s patio furniture.
That rich lady is Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), who has taken over her family business following the mysterious disappearance of her brother, father to Jenny (Bruna Marquezine). Victoria has uncovered the Scarab; Jenny, in a moment of desperation-via-flirtation, has smuggled it away and passed it to Jaime; Jaime becomes the Blue Beetle against his will and must square off against Victoria and her chief minion Conrad Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), who has a supersuit of his own. Even moreso than most origin stories, the specifics of what Blue Beetle will do once he accepts the call to heroism, etc., are not really dealt with. Blue Beetle makes some gestures toward fighting off corporate imperialism, but mostly, Jaime tries to keep his family safe and gain control of his non-negotiable metal suit. Any potential insularity, however, is mitigated by the deep bench of likable characters populating the Reyes family, including Jaime’s younger sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), his Nana (veteran character actress Adriana Barraza), and his zany Uncle Rudy (George Lopez), who happens to be an unsung genius at rigging up helpful gadgets.
At just the moment when a lot of movies might sideline or imperil Jaime’s family, director Ángel Manuel Soto and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer place them in the spotlight, even downplaying the Beetle himself for a short period. The movie seems to genuinely like these characters – and, moreover, the characters seem to genuinely like each other, lending Blue Beetle some real warmth amidst the standard business of super-suited enemies smashing into each other. The movie technically takes place within the winding-down DCEU, and though fans will notice some verbal and visual references to that fact, the half-futuristic border town of Palmera City is more the setting than any broader comic-book universe (though the climax, unfortunately, is largely consigned to a nondescript Bad Guy Base). Soto (Charm City Kings) seems determined to carve out some manner of stylistic identity for his heroes, frequently utilizing blue, purple and pink neon to light up sets that might otherwise look drab, and foregrounding a churning ’80s-fantasy synth score from Bobby Krlic. It’s a smaller but still-potent dose of what set James Wan’s fantasy-adventure Aquaman apart.
So yes, even Blue Beetle’s most distinctive elements have roots in pretty recent superhero fiction. It’s probably about 15 years and 50-plus movies too late to claim true-blue novelty; the action sequences are on the rote side, and if you’re blindsided by the revelation that while the villains believe Jaime’s love for his family makes him weak, Jaime comes to realize it actually makes him strong, well, I have a Fast & Furious Blu-ray set that will blow your mind. Yet the movie’s punchline-friendly lower-rung status – a less well-known superhero, in a movie initially intended for a streaming debut, now released in the dog days of both this summer and the DCEU in general, heavily featuring the screaming antics of George Lopez – is exactly what makes it an unassuming good time, punctuated by moments of sharp cultural specificity. (What a nice feeling to see pop-culture references that aren’t all spoon-fed blandness!) There may be bolder DC superhero movies, but despite that body-horrific transformation, Blue Beetle sure is the nicest one in a while.
Director: Ángel Manuel Soto
Writer: Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer
Starring: Xolo Maridueña, Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo, George Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Elpidia Carrillo
Release Date: August 18, 2023
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.